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by Sameer Pandya

  “Isn’t that your voice?” Josh asked.

  For someone who considered himself a cyber expert, Josh should have known the tricks of the trade of online harassment.

  “Of course. But I didn’t say those words in that order.”

  Cliff was relieved. Josh looked like I had ruined the speech he had written.

  “You don’t think I’d say something so stupid on camera—or even off it. They took words I said and spliced them together. I promise. If you get a hold of the video, I’m sure somebody in media services can show you the digital stitching. They’ve edited several minutes down to ten digestible, inflammatory seconds. I admit I went a little crazy with the posters, but they were horrible. Look at them.”

  I took out my phone and showed them a photo of the Haji flyer. Cynthia and Josh were not as horrified as I would have hoped.

  “Well, whatever the method, unfortunately, it’s out there,” Josh said. “You can’t unmelt butter.”

  My god. These were the insights that had gotten him that Audi and an endowed chair? I was certainly envious of his accolades, and his job security. But he was an idiot.

  “No, we can’t,” Cynthia said. “But how can we show that it’s, you know—margarine? Cheap margarine at that.”

  She looked at me and shrugged her shoulders, as if to apologize for having to go on with this horrible metaphor.

  “I think the ideas these students are spouting—that any discussion of racial and class inequality is anti-American—are big, pernicious, and nearly unstoppable at the moment,” Josh said. “We hear all these stories about students being too liberal on campus. Insisting statues be torn down and axing Homer and Humbert Humbert from the curriculum. But they’re not the real problem. The problem is the conservative students, caught up in whatever they’re hearing from their angry parents and all this hateful noise online, staging witch-hunts across the country.” Josh stopped and turned to me. “I’m not suggesting you’re a witch.”

  “Thanks for the clarification,” I said, appreciating the levity.

  “It’s impossible to contain something like this once it’s out on the internet,” Josh said. “The question is how best to minimize what has already happened to you. That’s the only thing we can control.”

  I didn’t want to admit it, but Josh’s sense of this seemed right. Cliff and Cynthia nodded their heads in agreement.

  “You have to lie completely low from now on,” Josh said.

  “Trust me,” I said, “I want nothing more than that. If I could, I’d disappear.”

  “Our primary concern is for you and your sense of security on this campus,” Cynthia said. “The dean’s office and the president’s office have already had plenty of calls from parents and media outlets. And we’re dealing with it. But we need a strategy for how to deal with the few remaining, die-hard protesters downstairs. They’ve cleverly set up their own sense of well-being as a weapon. The worse they feel, the more powerful they get. I don’t know how long this hunger strike will last, but they’re clearly trying to force our hand. One of the students from the group has approached the dean’s office, though. He would like to talk to you. Would you be interested in that?”

  “I’ve actually been trying to talk to them, but they won’t engage,” I said. “I’m assuming it’s that guy Alex who’s downstairs now?”

  “Alex?” Cynthia asked. “I don’t know. Whatever his name, he says he wants to talk, and perhaps get some sort of an apology.” Cynthia herself seemed apologetic at having to convey this last bit of information.

  I looked over at Cliff, who seemed to be my only real ally in the room.

  “An apology?” I asked. “Shouldn’t they be apologizing to me? This is a hit job. I don’t mind them calling me Haji, or whatever they’re calling me. But after being dragged through the mud, do I have to beg them for water to clean up?”

  The bad metaphors were piling up thick and high.

  I looked around the room and then again at the wall of mostly somber white men. The committee at the TC was asking me to apologize to an African-American man, and now my bosses were asking me to apologize to a group of white students. They were different situations—one the absurd machinations of the leisured, the other a debate about education and knowledge. In one, I understood where my fault lay; in the other, I did not. Apologizing in the way they both wanted meant I was taking a hit for them. But not apologizing meant that I might not have a job or access to a place that I had come to love. Either way, I wasn’t going to like where I ended up.

  “Forget the apology for now,” Cynthia said. “But would you at least consider talking to them? You’re welcome not to, of course. We would understand completely. But it might be helpful.”

  “Just to, you know, to stem the tide a little,” Josh said. “These students just want to be heard. They feel ignored.”

  I’m not sure what I had expected from this meeting when I’d walked in. Perhaps a conversation. But it was clear that the three of them had already decided what they wanted from me. This is what Cynthia and Cliff must have been talking about before I arrived.

  “I can’t say that I can empathize with what you are going through,” Cynthia said. “You’re in a horrible, horrible situation. And sadly, we don’t have any past experiences to lean on here. You don’t have to talk to this student. We’re just trying to figure out how to de-escalate. You saw them downstairs. They’re taking this hunger-strike thing seriously. We can’t control the media, if you can call these right-wing garbage dumps that. But we might be able to control what’s going on here.”

  “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Of course,” Cynthia said, her tone suggesting growing impatience. I couldn’t tell if, after the obligatory friendliness when I had first walked in, this was the real Cynthia. She did, after all, represent the needs of the university and not me. “We want you to think about it. But understand there is only so much that I can do. Only so much the university can do. At some point it’s going to be up to you. I’ll do my best to help, but there are limits. You’re going to have to help yourself too.”

  I had wanted Cynthia to like me, because it meant that I was more likely to keep my job. But it was clear now that her primary responsibility was to bring the hunger strike to an end. She would like me as long as I helped her to do that.

  I stood up.

  “There’s one other thing,” Josh said. “Just so all the facts are straight. You have a PhD from Columbia. Your first job was at a pretty good institution. All very serious, admirable credentials. Why did you come here for such a clear drop in rank?”

  I looked at Cliff, thinking he might say something so that I wouldn’t have to. He didn’t.

  “There were some complications at my old job,” I said.

  “What kind of complications?” Josh asked.

  “I had a disagreement with a colleague.”

  “A disagreement?”

  “I don’t think that’s relevant to what’s going on here,” Cliff interjected. He knew the story.

  “I’m only trying to get all the information,” Josh said. “If they learn that you left a previous job out of conflict, they’ll say that you’re prone to conflict. We need to get ahead of things.”

  As reasonable as that sounded, I had a feeling that what Josh really wanted was gossip.

  “Yes, Josh. I did have a disagreement with a colleague. But the nature of that conflict is irrelevant at this point. I left because I couldn’t do the job, and they finally called me on it. I had to produce a book, and I couldn’t. I have all sorts of reasons why. But ultimately, promise is only realized in work. Promise followed by further promises means nothing. I’m a middle-aged man with one small publication to my name. The years have passed and I haven’t done what I set out to do. I failed, Josh. That’s why I find myself in this situation. Because I failed.”

  When I looked up, Cliff had a sweet, parental expression.

  “I really appreciate you sharing that with us,”
Josh said, concern now covering his well-exfoliated face. “You know, I write in my book that engaging in insecurity is the key to our security. I’d be happy to give you a copy. It might help you work through some of this.”

  There was an awkward silence in the room. “Thanks for the offer, Josh, but I think I’m fine on my own,” I said. “I don’t think we really see eye to eye. So far as I can tell, the key to insecurity is insecurity.”

  Cliff and Cynthia smiled. They seemed equally tired of Josh’s clichés. For a second, knowing that all three of us thought Josh was an idiot was enough to get me through.

  “Let me know if you want to meet with the student,” Cynthia said. “But again, no pressure.”

  “I can be there with you if you like,” Josh said.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  As Josh and Cynthia began walking out, Cynthia shook my hand. “Let’s be in touch about your work. There are some funds in the dean’s office for special projects. Maybe we can knock off some classes so you can spend time developing your ideas.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “And I don’t mind talking to the student. Go ahead and set up the meeting. Is noon today too early? I can’t promise an apology, but I can certainly listen to him. I think it must be that bearded kid, Alex, who did all the talking yesterday.”

  “Thank you, Raj,” Cynthia said. “I’ll email him right now. He’ll be there.”

  “You can use my office if Dan is going to be there,” Cliff said.

  “I’ll check,” I said. “But I’d prefer to use my own.”

  Using Cliff’s office would make me feel like I was playing grown-up.

  I was sure Cynthia had just played me with the promise of funds that would probably not materialize. She didn’t seem to be the slick administrative type, but maybe authenticity was her strong suit. I was actually curious to talk to Alex. I wanted to understand what was going on with him. An anthropologist’s habit, I guess.

  Cynthia and Josh left; it was just Cliff and me in the room.

  “You don’t have to talk to him,” Cliff said. “I should have said that when Cynthia was here.”

  “I want to.”

  “Are you sure you want to do it alone?”

  “Maybe I’m being naïve, or maybe I trust my ethnographic skills too much, but I think I should talk to him one-on-one. If it’s the two of us and him, he might think we’re ganging up on him.”

  “I’ll be down the hall if you need me,” Cliff said.

  * * *

  I sat down in my office at noon, and a few minutes later heard a knock on the door.

  “Come in, Alex.”

  In the time that had passed since the morning meeting, I had done my best to be mindful, to clear all the noise from my head, to put myself in a place where I could listen to what Alex—I was so sure it was him—had to say. I wanted to understand what it was the protesters actually wanted, beyond all the silly slogans. It was my scholarly instinct to dig beneath. But also, I trusted my ability to talk through our problems and find some solution that didn’t involve them insisting on my firing.

  But the second the door opened and Robert walked through, the mindfulness disappeared. I didn’t know Alex, and there was an ease in that. But with Robert, despite his inappropriate interest in my salary and his general awkwardness, I thought we’d made some small bit of a connection. He’d always been engaged in class. And I’d given him half a sandwich I’d wanted for myself. The idea that he was actively involved in this, and not just an observer, felt like a betrayal.

  “Alex is downstairs. He feels pretty weak.”

  “Then maybe he should eat,” I said, the words coming out with a sharp edge.

  “Yes. That’s what we all want, don’t we? To put a stop to all this. To do the right thing.” His tentativeness from Monday—the looking, the looking away—was replaced by a newfound confidence. His sentences were now declarative, his spine more upright. And yet, these upgrades seemed temporary. I knew Robert was a strange bird. He was a fairly bright kid, but also a bit of a loner, not that good at picking up on social cues. He seemed like someone who needed guidance, and he had turned to me for that. Over the years, I’d had my share of students who’d wanted to forge a similar bond with me. But none who had pushed the boundaries quite as he did.

  The confidence I was sensing now had to be coming from Alex and Holly, and from Freedom Now and Mansfield, all of whom had given him a way to articulate his frustrations, mostly by giving him someone to blame. And I was that someone. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to convince him that I wasn’t the enemy.

  “Should I close the door?”

  “Open is fine.”

  Cliff stuck his head in.

  “All good?” Cliff asked.

  “Perfect,” I said, trying to sound professional. “Robert, do you know Professor Turner, the department chair?”

  “I’m happy to meet you, sir,” Robert said, standing up and shaking Cliff’s hand. “Are you teaching next term?”

  “I am,” Cliff said. “A seminar on the anthropology of adolescence.”

  “I’ll be sure to take it.”

  Cliff nodded and left.

  “So, you wanted to talk to me?” I asked, trying my best to remain calm.

  “I did,” Robert said.

  “Before we start, I want to ask you something. Did you take that video of me on Monday?”

  “Yes,” Robert said without hesitating. “I’ve been recording you on and off since the start of the term. The truth is, I couldn’t keep up with the complexity of your lectures. It always seems like you’re saying pretty straightforward stuff, but when I go back and listen to it, I can hear the layers. I mentioned your lecture on dirt on Monday. During the class period, I wasn’t sure why you were spending all this time talking about Hindus and pork and beef. But I wrote down the ideas. I recorded them and went back and listened. It didn’t sink in until a day or two later. I was by myself at a party, watching all these guys having fun. They didn’t want anything to do with me. I’ve never had a group of friends like that before.”

  Robert paused and looked down. I hoped that if the ideas from my class were still resonating with him, then maybe we’d be able to talk through this after all.

  “But there was something different about you on Monday. You were so much more animated than usual. You weren’t reading from your notes. You were talking like you were hanging out with a friend. And so toward the end of the lecture, I started taking a video like I do sometimes. My dad wanted to know how my classes were going and I thought I’d send it to him. I came to see you after class because I was excited. I wanted to talk about the ideas. About anthropology. But then you got mad at me when I brought up your salary. I know it was wrong of me to dig around for it. I wish I hadn’t done it.”

  I thought of myself as being a pretty decent judge of people, an astute reader of emotional tremors, but I couldn’t figure out how genuine Robert was being. His face gave nothing away.

  “I was embarrassed when you rushed me out of your office like that. I really like what you’ve been teaching us. I can’t wait to come to class, more so than any other class I’ve taken here. It gives me a way to make sense of the world. I’ve liked being a part of the conversation. But I made one mistake and you shut me out.”

  Listening to Robert, I was reminded of what an intimate encounter teaching could be. I pushed students to question their assumptions about themselves and people culturally different from them. I pushed them to open up. But I expected them to stay on their side of a boundary that I drew.

  “I don’t mean to shut you out, Robert. On the contrary, I’ve enjoyed having you in class. And salary aside, you were asking incisive questions on Monday, the kinds of questions I appreciate. Maybe I overreacted a bit in the moment, but I’ve moved on. I’d like to continue the rest of our conversation.”

  Robert appeared to be considering this. But then:

  “I don’t know. When I got home that night, I watched the video I
’d taken of class and those last lines of your lecture kept echoing in my head. I was offended. And I guess I wanted to shame you like you’d shamed me. I have some friends from high school who have been sharing articles from Freedom Now on Facebook, and it seemed like something they might pick up on, but I guess I assumed they wouldn’t respond. That’s why I sent that email to the dean’s office too. I knew they’d listen to me. But the next thing I knew, I heard back from the editor, saying that my story was live, and I heard back from the dean. I didn’t think it would come to all this.”

  “So why are you here now?” I asked. “You’ve already got plenty of videos of me. You want to take more?” I could hear the edge in my voice, but I couldn’t help it. I knew I needed to be the adult in the room, but I was tired of the role. I was the one whose livelihood was in danger.

  “I didn’t take the second video. And I didn’t set up the protest. That was all Alex and Holly. They’re in the same discussion section with me, and I’d heard them complain before about how biased your class is. You teach anthropology, but all you do is tell us what’s wrong with the discipline. The anthropologists weren’t colonists. They were scholars studying the differences between people. And there are differences—just look at you and me. When the first story came out, I sent it to them. I didn’t think they even knew who I was, but they wrote back right away. Alex is part of a group of students across the country pushing universities to return to a more traditional curriculum.”

  I wondered if Robert had reminded me so much of Babu because Anand Mehta was not so different from Jack Mansfield. Both men were deeply invested in the principle of separate but equal. And both of them had found good foot soldiers, men who were happy to hide behind the security of a group. I couldn’t sway the headwinds, but maybe I could pull one lost soul out of the gale.

  “Robert, there’s a difference between hating the West and criticizing it from within. It’s like I said yesterday: there’s a long history of criticism in America. You know Bruce Springsteen?”